


No Ones Gonna Fix It For Us, No One Can.

by CallicoKitten



Category: His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman, The Office (US)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Daemon, Angst, Character Study, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-28
Updated: 2012-02-28
Packaged: 2017-10-31 20:57:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,854
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/348301
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CallicoKitten/pseuds/CallicoKitten
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Daemon fic. Pam needs to learn how to stand up for herself, Ryan needs to grow up, foster care is no walk in the park, Andy has family issues and Gabe's seen some horrible things. A series of short drabbles I wrote for a friend.</p>
            </blockquote>





	No Ones Gonna Fix It For Us, No One Can.

**Author's Note:**

> Unbeta'd and first time office fic so OOC in some parts. Second daemon fic (I've been challenged to do 12 any suggestions?)
> 
> Also. These are all the headcannons of my friend and I so yeah xD 
> 
> Lyrics and title from 'Two' by Antlers.

### 01\. Pam and Elian

> _[Tell me when you think that we became so unhappy_  
>  Wearing silver rings with nobody clapping  
>  When we moved here together we were so disappointed  
>  Sleeping out of tune with our dreams disjointed] 
>
>> >  

> Pam always knew that El would settle as something cute and caring so when he settles as a koala when she’s twelve she’s not surprised. She knows most people wished for huge, interesting daemons, like tigers and lions but she never did. El was quiet and cute and cuddly and that’s all she really wanted.

> Pam’s the quiet girl in school, she has lots of friends but she doesn’t really think they know her all too well. She has a loving family and a stable home. She gets okay grades and she’s happy for the most part. Her parents don’t expect much of her and that’s okay, Pam’s never really envisioned herself as ending up as anything too amazing.  
>  She tells herself all she wants out of life is the white picket fence all her friends what and only Elian knows it isn’t true. 

> When she’s thirteen she wins an award in art. She’s never been good at anything and the next day she tells her mother she’s going to be an artist. She tries to pretend it doesn’t hurt when her mom smiles and says, “Of course you are, dear.” She asks about Art College and her mom smiles and says it would be a waste of money and doesn’t she want a real job so she can support her kids? Pam doesn’t bring it up again and Elian shakes his head. 

> They meet Roy in high school, he’s in the year above her, his daemon is a boisterous border collie named Isla, he has a nice smile and she likes the way he brushes her hair back from her forehead. Elian doesn’t like Roy but her mother coos over him and all her friends think it’s so perfect it’s almost a Disney film so when Roy proposes in the day after her high school graduation she says yes. Every little girls dream come true, right?

> Roy doesn’t go to college, he gets a job working as a delivery man for a paper company and Pam doesn’t really want to leave her mom alone so she accepts Roy’s offer to get her a job at the same company. They move in together and as Pam packs up her art supplies she convinces herself she never really wanted to go to Art College anyway. She tells herself she’s happy. Elian rolls his eyes, sceptical.

> “It’ll just be temporary,” she tells herself as gets ready for her first day of work. “Just until we get enough money to get settled, then we’ll be happy.”  
>  “Yeah, you keep telling yourself that, Pam.” El mutters.

> When they meet Michael and his excitable toucan daemon Pam realises she may have made a mistake taking this job. When they’re introduced to Dwight and his disciplined German Sheppard daemon she knows she’s made a mistake. But of course, she never says anything. 

> She sits there day after day at her desk and wonders how she got here. 

> After two years of engagement and no sign of a wedding date Pam starts to rethink her relationship with Roy. He stays out late with his friends, disregards most of what she says and when she brings up doing night classes in art he laughs and says they don’t have enough money.

> “We seem to have enough money to finance his endless sports games,” Elian grumbles when Roy and Isla are out of earshot.

> “El,” Pam warns.

> El rolls his eyes, “When are you going to stand up for us, Pam?”

> “I’m happy.” Pam says.

> Elian scoffs, “I’m your daemon, Pam. You can’t lie to me.”

> The next day the new salesman arrives. His name is Jim, his daemon is a vixen and he gets on Dwight’s nerves like no one Pam’s ever met. And Pam has to admit, he’s pretty cute.

> “You like him,” Elian whispers as they leave that night.

> “I do not,” Pam protests. “He’s just a friend.”

> Elian laughs, “Yeah, okay.”

> With Jim, Pam starts to feel free. She laughs louder, she jokes, she gossips and El and Laeta speak quietly and giggle conspiratally. With Jim she starts really questioning her relationship with Roy, with Jim it’s her putting the wedding off. 

> “We should say something,” El says quietly one day as they’re watching Jim mess with Dwight. Pam knows he’s right but every time she tries to the words get stuck in her throat. 

> “You love him.” El says.

> It’s not until Jim kisses her at the casino night and tells her he loves her that she finally tells Roy it’s over. Isla howls and Roy cries and El whispers, “Finally.”  
>  Pam phones Jim the night she breaks up with Roy and there are a hundred things she wants to say but when he picks up her tongue gets tied and she hangs up without saying anything. She finds her own apartment, signs up for art classes and buys a new car and Elian starts smiling more.

> She looks around at the people she works with and realises that she is actually happy. Michael’s a goof, Dwight’s a weirdo and Pam’s a hundred percent sure she’s actually the only sane one in the office but they’ve become her friends, her family.

> “Only one thing missing,” El whispers mischievously and Pam smiles. 

> She knows she’ll get to Jim one day but right now she’s just happy to finally have found her voice.

### 02\. Ryan and Amya 

> > _[The choir's going to sing, and this thing is going to kill you  
>  Something in my throat made my next words shake  
>  And something in the wires made the lightbulbs break]_
> 
> Ryan’s always known he and Amya are meant to be more than just a temp.

> He’s known it since his mom and dad split up and he got through it without crying once. He’d known it since his dad left him and told him he was a loser. He’d known it since he got his mom to successfully break up with every boyfriend he didn’t like. He’d known it since Amya settled as a weasel, clever and cunning. He’d known since he sailed through school top of every class. 

> For a lot of his childhood it’s just his mom and him and she lets him do whatever he wants and always greets him with a smile and a hug. His mother remarries when he’s ten and Alexander (never Alex) tries his best to be a dad but Ryan thinks he’s too old for a dad so they never really bond. 

> The temp job at Dunder Mifflin was supposed to be just that; temporary. 

> When they first walk into the office they look around disdainfully. “None of these people will ever make it as anything.” Amya whispers with contempt and Ryan agrees.  
>  No one here has a drop of potential. Maybe Jim but that’s about it and after one day there Ryan’s ready quit and it’s not just because of Michael’s awfully obvious man crush on him. It’s because deep down he thinks he knows that this stupid paper company is going to kill him.

> “Might as well make the most of it,” Amya says. 

> Ryan agrees. “Let’s do Kelly.” 

> Amya isn’t impressed by this, mostly because Kelly’s canary daemon, Helios, never stops talking (even in his sleep and don’t ask how they know) but Kelly’s pretty and available so they do it to pass the time. 

> When he gets the job at corporate he leaves everything behind without a backward glance. This is it, he thinks, we’re on our way. They go to awesome parties, they buy ridiculously expensive clothes, they boss Michael around (though this doesn’t seem to upset him), they drink too much and sleep with insanely hot women. They’re living the dream and Ryan sort of wishes he knew where his dad lived just so he could rub his smug face in it. 

> It’s Amya who suggests they try drugs out (which is stupid because who gets pressured in to doing stuff by their daemons?) Amya is enamoured with their secretary’s daemon, a handsome red panda and she offers him a line of coke at a party.

> “Do it, Ry,” Amya hisses, eyes fixed on Skander the panda. Ryan shrugs because it’s not like he’s got anything to loose and he has to admit she is pretty hot. 

> Two months later he finds himself snorting coke in the disabled bathroom of a greasy restaurant and his nose starts bleeding and Amya giggles and goes limp. He’s lost his job and his friends and his fancy apartment and he’s been fucking arrested.

> He misses his life, he misses Kelly, he even (sort of, maybe, a little bit) misses Michael.

> He carries Amya out of the restaurant and calls his mom and like always she kisses his booboo gets him in to rehab and helps him talk the temp agency in to taking him back. His step father gives him a stern lecture and he doesn’t tell Ryan anything new.

> Ryan knows he’s not a good person. Ryan knows he uses people and thinks he’s superior and has never, ever done anything that wasn’t self-serving. His daemon is a weasel for Christ sakes. 

> Ryan knows he’s not a good person. Ryan doesn’t want to be a bad person it’s just something he can’t help. Like the way he decides he doesn’t want Kelly after he wins her back again or the way he decides to go to Thailand after his life is finally getting back on track.

> He finds himself working in a bowling alley with dyed blonde hair. He’s single, he’s living with his parents, he keeps arguing with his daemon and the air conditioning in the bowling alley is broken. He’s hot, angry and he hates himself. 

> “Why did you have to be a weasel?” he snarls to Amya.

> Amya hasn’t spoken to him in a few days but this time she snaps at him and spits, “I’m your daemon, I didn’t have much say in it, did I? Why’d you have to be such a crappy person?”

> He’s about to reply when he hears Michael’s toucan daemon, Mekena’s shrill voice and Amya’s ears perk up and they try not to appear too excited. 

> And a year later they find themselves back where they started. A temp at Dunder Mifflin, dating Kelly, living in a tiny cramped apartment, office in the cupboard (well that’s new.) 

> “Ergh,” he says, rubbing his eyes. “Back to square one.”

> Amya licks him on the cheek, “You love it here, though.” she says and she jumps off his shoulder to greet Helios warmly. 

> Kelly kisses Ryan on the cheek and Ryan totally doesn't think, love you.

### 03\. Erin and Bran

>   
> _[You were just a little kid, and they cut your hair_  
>  Then they stuck you in machines, you came so close to dying  
>  They should have listened, they thought that you were lying]  
> 

>  

> For kids in foster care their daemons usually settle in one of two ways. The first is as something big, a wolf, a tiger, big enough to protect their human from whatever else the world has to throw at them. The second is as something small, to hide away from the world.

> Bran chooses the second.

> Erin has been in the hospital for three years, she doesn’t get visitors and she’s never had a chance to play like other kids. She doesn’t have a mom and dad (doesn’t really understand why) all she knows is that she’s sick and because she’s sick she can’t go out much. In the hospital there are rarely other kids that can actually play with her so she and Bran play alone mostly.

> In way she supposes the doctors and nurses are her family and the hospital is her home but the doctors and nurses change a lot so Erin has to learn to trust each new one right away (it’s just easier).

> Bran settles when Erin leaves the hospital at six years old. He’s a little red squirrel with big tufts on his ears and he never leaves her shoulder. The doctor’s call it arrested development. As in Erin “stopped developing at the age the trauma occurred.” 

> Erin doesn’t really see a problem with it but apparently people think it’s weird.

> She goes from the hospital to a foster home with eight other kids. She’s stuck in the middle, too old to get as much attention as the younger kids, too young to be independent enough not to care. Her foster mother tries, she really does and Erin knows she does, but it still hurts being six and alone for most of the day. She’d like to say she spends most of her time in her room but she doesn’t have one. She shares it with two bratty teenage twin girls so she spends most of her time sitting in the tree house reading books with Bran and sometimes she misses the hospital.

> At school the kids think she’s weird so she doesn’t have many friends but at least they leave alone and don’t tease her.

> She’s moved again when she’s eight and then seven more times.

> Some of the homes are nice. Some of them aren’t.

> Erin moves through them so fast that she hardly has time to unpack and learn the names of her new parents before she’s moved off again. Her hair is her room and Bran is her only friend. She stops talking for a while and stops learning and, well, she just stops.

> She just hides.

> When she’s thirteen she’s placed in her last home. Sam and Ellie and kind and smiley and they’re the only ones who notice that Bran doesn’t talk to anyone other than Erin. They’re the ones who teach her it’s okay to have fun, they start taking her to church, they start feeling like a real family and slowly, slowly, Bran starts talking to other daemons. 

> But obviously this doesn’t last. Nothing good ever lasts and when Erin is sixteen Sam and Ellie get in to a bad car accident so Erin and her foster brother have to move out on their own.

> The old Erin (pre-Sam and Ellie) would have shut down. The new happy Erin takes it all in stride. So what if her apartment has leaky ceilings and a roach problem? So what if she has to work full time and can’t go to school? And if it all gets too much for her Bran’s there to whisper; “Breathe, Erin. Keep smiling.”  
>  When she gets the job at Dunder Mifflin she thinks she might have finally found somewhere to fit in.  
>  Michael is fun, Phyllis is kind and Andy is just about the nicest person she’s ever met in her life. Bran must think so too because he actually voluntarily strikes up a conversation with Andy’s beagle daemon, Emuna. 

> She spends a lot of time thinking about what it would be like to date Andy. She bets he’d be as nice as Sam was to Ellie, maybe nicer even. But every time they try something seems to get in the way. She tries with Gabe. She really, really does; but there’s something about him that reminds of her foster care and his daemon creeped Bran out too much. 

> “Don’t worry,” Bran soothes. “Andy’ll come around. Emmy says he likes you.”

> Erin wants to believe him. She really, really does.

### 04\. Andy and Emuna 

>   
> _[Two people talking inside your brain_  
>  Two people believing that I'm the one to blame  
>  Two different voices coming out of your mouth]   
> 

>  

> When Emmy settles as a cute little beagle with huge eager-to-please eyes it feels like a kick in the teeth for Andy. 

> It’s not that she’s not lovely is just that she’s a _beagle_. 

> Andy’s always wanted to show his parents that he’s just as good as Walter Jr. On a level he knows the lengths he goes to impress them is insane but they’re his parents and all he wants is for his dad to smile at him and say, “Good job, Andy.”

> Because really, Andy doesn’t think Walter is that much more amazing than him. I mean sure, he learnt how to talk at the age of four months and his daemon, Cassini always takes interesting and unusual shapes and okay, maybe he is pretty charming. And good at everything. 

> Okay so maybe Walter is pretty amazing. But Andy can be amazing too. 

> “Why do you have to be a beagle?” he grumbles as they get ready to tell his parents she’s settled.

> She looks up at him and whines. “Sorry Andy, I tried to be something more impressive...” the look she gives him makes him feel like he’s just kicked her in the face and he immediately apologises. She wags her tail to show he’s forgiven and licks his hand.

> When Andy tells his parents Emmy’s settled his father’s eagle owl daemon actually snorts and his mother’s brown bear looks away. Walter, ever the charmer, hops off his chair and says, “That’s great Andy! Suits you!”

> And Andy’s not sure whether he wants to hug him or punch him. 

> He decides to hug his brother and later to punch his wall while Emmy savages a pillow.

> Walter’s daemon settles as a peregrine falcon the next year and his parents through him a fucking party. Andy and Emmy smile politely all the way through it but later their room takes a beating and Walter comes upstairs and hangs his head apologetically and it makes Andy wants to hit him even more.  
>  When he gets in to Cornell his dad smiles at him.

> His dad actually smiles at him. Emmy wags her tail so hard her whole body shakes. 

> For a year Andy gets to see what it’s like to be Walter. His father introduces him to rich friends as his “son who’s going to Cornell” and his mother calls him every other day and Walter smiles admiringly every time he enters the room. 

> And then Walter gets in to Harvard and Andy’s dropped so completely he starts to wonder whether he imagined that last year.  
>  “Screw Walter,” Emmy says, licking his cheek. 

> Andy wants to. But he can’t. It’s hard to forget someone who’s been the bane of his existence for his whole life.

> When they finally get a job at some lousy paper company Andy sort of wishes he was still unemployed. 

> “We don’t have to tell them what we really work as,” Emmy says, deviously. 

> Andy tells his parents he’s manager and they start to treat him less like someone nonexistent and more like an embarrassment and yes, Andy realises that anyone else would hate that. But being the family joke is better than being “the-other-son.” Well, marginally. Sort of.

> It’s silly really, how working at that stupid paper company turns in to the best thing to ever happen to Andy.

> First there’s the time he punches the wall and he goes to anger management which turns out to be the best thing he’s ever done in his life. Then there’s Angela which is pretty horrific at the end but when it starts out it’s great. And then there was Erin...

> But Andy thinks the best thing about Dunder Mifflin is that no one’s disappointed to see him. Well, some people are. Like Gabe. Gabe. But they’re not disappointed that he’s not Walter, they’re disappointed he’s Andy. If that makes sense.

> “It doesn’t,” Emmy yips.

> Oh well.

### 05\. Gabe and Meera

>   
> _[Daddy was an asshole, he fucked you up_  
>  Built the gears in your head, now he greases them up  
>  And no one paid attention when you just stopped eating]  
> 

>  

> Gabe knows that when people look at him they assume his daemon is some sort of insect or maybe a frog; something creepy and slimy and weird, like they think Gabe is. But when Meera swoops in and lands on his shoulder with an impressive caw, all big and black and ominous, almost everyone does a double take. 

> He sees his first horror movie when he’s three years old. 

> Except it’s not a horror movie it’s real life and it involves his father, a rifle and his older brother.

> His mother pretends it didn’t happen (they died in an accident, remember?) but Gabe knows it did and Gabe knows it fucked him up completely. His mother knows too and she remarries and has a bunch of normal, happy kids that don’t freak people out and Gabe’s sort of left to fend for himself.

> At school he’s the weird kid with too big clothes. He’s quiet and smart and awkward so he’s an easy target for bullies even when Meera takes the form of a wolf. He doesn’t remember a day when he came back from school without bruises. 

> His teachers start to worry about his bruises and quietness and Gabe’s seen by numerous doctors. It ends with him being put on antidepressants. He’s eight and it makes him feel like his head is stuffed with cotton wool and his world becomes black and white.

> “It’ll get better,” Meera insists and Gabe’s sceptical. 

> Meera settles when Gabe was fourteen, when Gabe is still Gabriel and he’s just the tall, skinny weird kid with punched black eyes and clothes too small for him. His step father laughs and calls him a freak and the kids at school say the same but they back off a bit because Meera is big.  
>  Meera settles as a raven. It suits them. And besides, who doesn’t like Poe?

> “Quoth the raven?” he whispers.

> “Nevermore.” Meera caws. 

> When Gabe’s eighteen and he moves away to college and for three years life is good. He becomes Gabe, he stops taking the pills and he’s happy. They go to Japan and they make friends and they start to learn that being a little weird is fine. 

> When he finishes college he finds a job at Sabre as assistant to Jo and he forgets what it’s like to have a social life. After three years working for her he dusts off his old pill bottles and Meera says, “It’ll get better...”

> Gabe glares at her and she nips him on the ear. 

> By the time Gabe’s sent to Scranton he’s not exactly sure who he is anymore. He’s back to the daze the antidepressants cause and he’s little more than a machine. Gabe do this, do that, stay late, go home, wait, don’t go home, do this. It’s like a dream, endless and monotonous. He sits at his desk in Scranton, Jo’s just left and Gabe’s not really sure what to do with himself. Erin walks past and flashes him a small smile and Kelly and Ryan and arguing again and Andy shoots him a dark look and his beagle daemon snarls. It all feels disturbingly familiar, comforting, real. 

> “It’s not so bad here,” Meera says softly.

> Gabe smiles a little. “I suppose you’re right.”


End file.
